Polls Show Putin Faces Fight

Recent polls suggest it’s unclear whether Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be able to gather enough votes in the March 4 presidential election to avoid a second round.

One poll shows Mr. Putin short of the 50% of the vote that’s required to avoid a runoff, while a state-owned polling agency showed support for Russia’s most powerful politician rising in the last month, with over half the population ready to back him in a future presidential vote, despite widely criticized parliamentary elections and anti-government protests in December.

The poll by the Public Opinion Fund showed that 45% of voters would support Mr. Putin in elections were held immediately–a result that would necessitate a second round of elections were it to happen during the actual vote on March 4.

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Yet data from the government-owned All Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or Vtsiom, painted a rosier picture for Mr. Putin, with 52% of respondents saying he would get their vote.

Perhaps more telling is a second set of data in the Public Opinion Fund poll, showing responses to the question “Have you grown to trust Putin more or less in the last month?” While in 2010 only 12% said they had lost trust in Putin, that number began to grow in the last year, reaching a peak of 27% in December 2011, amid the largest anti-government protests in Russia’s post Soviet history. In the latest poll, dated January 12-15, the number hovered near its highes, with 25% saying the prime minister had lost their trust.

While Mr. Putin’s rating showed a seven point jump since late December in the Vtsiom poll, those of his opponents remained more or less constant. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov finished a distant second with 11% in the Vtsiom poll, one point above his late-December rating, while nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky took third place with 9%.

In the Vtsiom poll, metals billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, part-owner of the New Jersey Nets, saw his rating sink to 2%, from 4% on Dec. 24.

Similar numbers were shown for Mr Putin’s opposition in the Public Opinion Fund poll.

Support for Mr Putin may swell further, the head of Vtsiom said Friday, predicting the prime minister may take as much as 57% of the vote in the March 4 election.

The margin of error for the Vtsiom poll is 3.4%. Polls have not proven to be very accurate in illustrating the twists and turns of Russian politics.

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